O Inlay Opal set in hard Sterling Silver Ring

Quantity

At Australian Opal Cutters our Crystal Opal Rings are hand-crafted Natural Australian Crystal Opals that have been hand cut from rough Opal in the Australian Opal Cutters Sydney workshop.
Unfortunately many online sellers are offering “Australian Crystal Opal” but it is a far cheaper Ethiopian Opal alternative, a material that is often heat and chemical treated to bring out the colour
Many others offer “Opal” but are actually selling fake plastic!
At Australian Opal Cutters our Natural Australian Crystal Opal is exactly that, Natural, Genuine, Australian Opal that has not been treated in any chemical process to bring out or enhance the colour!
This is the perfect gift as it an Opal an investment and the only gemstone where you can "hold a rainbow in your hand" literally!
The Crystal Opals are hand-cut from the "rough" material by industry experts who know how to find the colour and carefully remove the Opal "potch" (Opal without colour). This is an age-old tradition and is a cutting process that has not changed in 100 years.
The Opal is then set in a piece of jewellery that we have designed in our Sydney workshop and Opal cutting factory. Our designers have been designing for decades and have had the enormous privilege of designing jewellery for the Royal family:
Rainbow colour appear in may places and materials. Through faceting a diamond we are able to split light into the colours of the spectrum. Through different checmicals, or treatments we can make certain gems show rainbow colours...but did you know that there is only one place on earth where rainbows actually form and can be held? This is in Opal.
Crystal Opal is absolutely unique as tiny microscopic water molecules actually bond and merge with silica to form a gemstone (Opal) this process is so mysterious that scientists still cannot tell us why it happens. The result is that microscopic rainbows actually form inside the gem. They are "trapped" or held there in suspension, and will not evaporate (like a rainbow in the sky does).
This is a "miracle from the ground" so now you can "Hold a Rainbow"!
Technical Specifications
Genuine Natural Australian Crystal Opal occurs in limited quantity in all of the Australian Opal fields (Andamooka, Lightning Ridge in NSW, Coober Pedy in South Australia and the Queensland Boulder Opal Fields). A hydrated amorphous form of silica SiO2•nH2O consisting of spheres of silicon dioxide molecules arranged in regular, closely packed planes. The Opal is pure hydrated silica SiO2•nH2O “free” from oxides (Magnezium) so it has a clear translucency. Precious Crystal Opal shows a variable interplay of internal colors, and though it is a mineraloid, it has an internal structure. At microscopic scales, precious opal is composed of silica spheres some 150 to 300 nm in diameter in a hexagonal or cubic close-packed lattice. It was shown by J. V. Sanders in the mid-1960s that these ordered silica spheres produce the internal colors by causing the interference and diffraction of light passing through the microstructure of the opal. The regularity of the sizes and the packing of these spheres determines the quality of precious Opal. Where the distance between the regularly packed planes of spheres is around half the wavelength of a component of visible light, the light of that wavelength may be subject to diffraction from the grating created by the stacked planes. As one time central Australia was filled with a great inland sea (known as the Artesian Basin) Plant matter, marine life was trapped and deposited in the sediment as this sea receeded. As a result of this Crystal Opal material has formed from fossilised shell gastropods, Belemnites and other dinosaur vertebra.
Guaranteed free of dyes and artificial colour.